


Boots

by Heptapora



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, fluff (sort of)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-22
Updated: 2016-09-22
Packaged: 2018-08-16 15:28:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8107783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heptapora/pseuds/Heptapora
Summary: A little drabble based on a conversation about the shoes that inexplicably end up on all the Dalish Inquisitors.





	

Paradoxically, the Inquisitor is most in motion when she is at rest. With no purpose, no task to grapple with, her hands forget they are trapped at the ends of her wrists and flutter, twist together, tangle in her hair. Her head casts from side to side, eyes darting, all the more attentive when she hasn’t yet found something to focus on; Her lips twist, her jaw works as she bites her cheek. Her feet kick. Against the leg of a chair or a crate when there's one at hand, and against the air when there’s nothing handy to knock her heels into, to scuff her toes against. Always, she moves.  
  
And always, he watches. Once, he’d told himself that the watching was just reflex. Motion draws the eye, after all.  
  
Eventually, he’d abandoned the pretense. He watches because she is vibrant; Keen and spirited and electrically _alive_. The sheer energy in her could shake down mountains. It’s utterly captivating, and he could no more escape the pull of her than the pull of the earth at his feet.  
  
Today is no exception; The book she’s brought him, retrieved from some ‘expert’ in Val Royeaux, (And for a pretty penny at that, by the looks of it) is barely holding his attention, overshadowed by the presence of the woman herself. He stands hunched over his desk, thumbing through fragile pages, hoping after all the trouble he might actually be able to use it.. But he keeps losing focus, his eyes pulled again and again to the sofa at the edge of the room where the Inquisitor sprawls; Swinging foot, kick-kick-kick, head thrown back over the arm. Her hair is all windswept, and she’s pressed a hand over her eyes, kneading at them with fingers and thumb. Tired, he thinks, peeking at her through the fringe of his lashes. And no wonder, either.  
  
His eyes drop and this time he makes his way through a few pages before he looks up again and finds that her hand has lifted, a gleam of green beneath her fingers- She’s watching him watch her, expectant, and he gives up the book entirely, lifting his fingertip from the page. “Can you use that?” she asks- Hopeful, and her hand slides up into her hairline, tousling at the thick strands. Her foot stops swinging, but only so she can toe restlessly at the heel of the opposite boot.  
  
_Probably not_ , he thinks, and, “Perhaps,” he says instead. When he approaches the couch, she starts to sit upright, probably to give him room- He sweeps her legs up before she can move too far, settling them across his lap. For the space of a breath, she’s finally still- Surprise, and maybe nerves; But the moment passes, and she relaxes a little bit… Then a little bit more when he cups one calf in his palm and digs the knuckles of his opposite hand into the taut muscle. Her sigh is one of utter pleasure, and her eyes half-shut.  
  
“Oh. Alright,” she murmurs, and he hums. This close, he can still smell the outdoors on her, cold and mountain air. She’d come straight here, then- To deliver his parcel and to linger, tired or no. Affection stirs deep in his chest, and he works at her legs, following the lines of muscle down to the tops of her boots. When the leather stops his hand a second time, he fingers the edge of it, thinking of the kicking feet, the scuffing toes, the way he’s seen her shed her boots to scale trees and cliffsides over and over again- Only to pick them back up, put them back on after. Thinking, too, of all the barefoot Dalish he’s seen, the Dalish in footwraps- But almost never Dalish in heavy, human shoes like these. She’s very nearly melted under his hands by now, lazy and comfortable, but when he hooks a finger into the top of her shoe and tugs, gently, her eyes open, meet his in a silent question.  
  
“Were these always your custom?” he asks, and fills the beat of puzzled silence after with, “Before the conclave.” The feet in his lap wiggle a little bit, rocking.  
  
“No, not.. Really,” she answers- And he raises a brow.  
  
“Not really?”  
  
“Not ever, honestly. “ She wiggles her feet again, and she’s looked from his face to the tops of her boots, frowning softly.  
  
“So why now?” He slides his fingers in between the leather and the leg of her pants, squeezing softly at her ankle. Her lips purse, thoughtful.  
  
“People just started.. Giving them to me,” she confesses, slowly. “I thought it would be best to wear them- I didn’t want to argue, first. And then they started giving me _nicer_ pairs… I don’t like them overmuch, but I didn’t want to…” She trails off, raises her gaze from her feet to his face- And shrugs, twitching one shoulder helplessly.  
  
“I see,” he answers. His fingers slide out of the top of her boot, but only so he can hook a finger beneath the laces instead, loosening them with deliberate little tugs, all the way down. The Inquisitor watches his progress until he’s tugged a single boot free and dropped it into the floor. A little voice in the back of his head- Reason, he thinks- whispers that _this is a mistake_. But it always is, with her. Always mistakes. One more can’t ruin them any more thoroughly than the rest. “You,” he says, starting to work on the other side. “are the Inquisitor. You could run around topless if you pleased-“ A scandalized little laugh as the second boot joins the first, stocking feet in his lap now. “and no one would dare try to stop you.” When he looks back to her face, she’s grinning, all shock and wonder. After a second, he adds, primly, “..But please refrain.”  
  
“..Would you try to stop me?” she asks, voice quiet but impish, teeth dragging at her lip.  
  
“I might confine you to quarters.” It spills out of him before he has time to think about it, buttery-smooth and layered in innuendo; His Inquisitor laughs and there’s the scandal again, but definite delight, too. She pinches at him with her toes, surprisingly nimble even through the thick woolen socks; He catches her foot between his hands and digs his thumbs hard into the arch, and she’s flushed to the tips of her ears when she murmurs approval, eyes gleaming.  
  
“So no one would dare but you. How brave, Solas,” she counters, and he shakes his head.  
  
“Selfish,” he corrects her, mildly, and she laughs again. “Greedy.”  
  
She can’t know how much he means it; She doesn’t see the danger here, in the casual intimacy. She doesn’t see the mistake. And with her feet in his lap and the presence of her electric in the air all around him, he shuts his eyes against it, too, and hopes the disaster when it comes will leave at least some of this feeling intact.


End file.
